[F]or a president who came to office promising to end what he considered the excesses of the new security state, Mr. Obama’s speech on Friday was as much about the larger question of faith. Rather than throw out the programs at issue, he hoped to convince the public that they are being run appropriately.

2) It will be kept, at least in the short-term, by the government until Congress figures out what to do with it. (And don’t think the telecom lobby won’t play a role in that.)

3) It will be searched.

4) Searches will be approved by a court with a record of being friendly to the government, one without a new privacy advocate.

5) National security letters can still be issued by the FBI without a court order.

6) Much of this activity will remain secret.

***

As a 2008 candidate, Barack Obama regularly castigated then-President George W. Bush for what he called excessive surveillance programs. Joe Biden, now Obama’s vice president, criticized former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s GOP presidential platform at the time as little more than “a noun, a verb and 9/11.”

Yet Sept. 11 played a starring role in Obama’s justification of the signals intelligence program during his Friday speech about National Security Agency reforms. The president invoked Sept. 11 eight times Friday, saying the attacks on New York and the Pentagon justify and demand maintaining a robust surveillance apparatus to keep the nation and its allies safe.

It’s the latest in Obama’s evolution from a critic of those who used Sept. 11 to justify national security procedures to a leader who uses the attacks to defend his administration’s surveillance policies.

***

“We heard a lot of lies in this speech by Obama,” Assange said. “I think it’s embarrassing for a head of state to go on like that for 45 minutes and say almost nothing.”…

Assange said the speech wouldn’t have happened without the leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who disclosed the details of these programs. Obama was “dragged, kicking and screaming” to the address, Assange said.

“Although those national whistle blowers have forced this debate, this president has been dragged, kicking and screaming to today’s address. He is being very reluctant to make any concrete reforms,” he said. “Unfortunately today we also see very few concrete reforms.”

Obama is just pushing the debate further down the road, Assange said, by delegating some of these decisions to a divided Congress and panels of lawyers.

***

“What I think I heard is that if you like your privacy, you can keep it,” Paul, the Republican senator from Kentucky, said in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “But in the meantime, we’re going to keep collecting your phone records, your email, your text messages and, likely, your credit card information.”…

“He mentioned Paul Revere. But Paul Revere was warning us about the British coming,” Paul said. “He wasn’t warning us that the Americans are coming.”

Later in the interview, Paul said he’s opposed to all massive data collection, by both the federal government and the private sector. Beyond civil liberty concerns, Paul said such massive surveillance just isn’t practical.

“Who are we going to hire, [Edward] Snowden’s contractor to hold all the information?” Paul said, laughing at his own joke.

***

If I understand Obama’s new policy on Section 215, he is going to have the Executive Branch ask the judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to begin to limit when the Executive can query the Section 215 database. That is, he will ask the judiciary to take on a new power to limit the Executive, so that the Executive can only query the database when the executive gets a court order signed by the FISC. In his words, “I have directed the Attorney General to work with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court so that during this transition period, the database can be queried only after a judicial finding, or in a true emergency.”

Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but doesn’t Congress need to be involved in this little enterprise? The FISC is a creation of Congress. It has no power to do anything that Congress doesn’t grant it. The Executive and the Judiciary can’t just meet and agree on a new set of rules to govern surveillance programs; those rules are supposed to be generated by Congress. I suppose it shows how far from Congress’s text the FISC has taken the law that the Executive sees the FISC as the primary negotiating partner in creating new rules. The FISC’s interpretation of Section 215 is based on an implausible reading of Congress’s law, so it’s almost like it’s the FISC’s authority at issue, not Congress’s. But I hope we could recognize that FISA is a statute and statutes are enacted by the legislature. If the President and the FISC are having trouble locating this sometimes-elusive branch of government, they’re in the fancy building with the dome near the Supreme Court. Big building, can’t miss it.

***

Obama cannot have it both ways. Either the government’s mass collection of every American’s telephone records is essential to national security, or it isn’t. Either the surveillance activities that ignited public outrage when they were revealed last June amount to nothing more than a “modest encroachment” that “the American people should feel comfortable about,” as Obama claimed at the time, or they pose substantial threats to privacy that need to be mitigated, as he indicated today. Either the reforms he announced will protect Americans from indiscriminate snooping, or they are mere window dressing aimed at “giv[ing] the American people greater confidence that their rights are being protected” (as he put it today) without actually protecting those rights.

Obama did manage to utter at least one important truth:

“Given the unique power of the state, it is not enough for leaders to say: trust us, we won’t abuse the data we collect. For history has seen too many examples when that trust has been breached. Our system of government is built on the premise that our liberty cannot depend on the good intentions of those in power; it depends upon the law to constrain those in power.”

While Snowden initially represented his priorities as being those of American civil liberties and the exposure of spying on American citizens, the leaks quickly turned into tales exposing the legitimate spying activities external to the United States…

Today was a victory for Snowden and his allies, but not the kind of victory civil libertarians should hope for. The restrictions on spying on American citizens announced by the president seem mostly like window dressing, adding a few hoops and a mess of paperwork to slow down the process without achieving fundamental change. But if the restrictions on spying overseas are real, and not just lip service, they represent a marked degradation of the ability of America’s intelligence community to do the job they’ve been tasked with from the beginning.

This should please Snowden and his allies. Their aim, rather than ensuring the protection of civil liberties, has turned into a broader push to restrict the footprint of the intelligence gathering efforts of the United States. It’s now a reality only made possible because of their appeal to a power structure that essentially shares their view of the proper role of America in the world.

Blowback

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Spark, I care, so I’m going to take Axe’s suggestion and ask you if your throat’s better. Not that I think you’re a ‘miscreant’ but I know Axefellow, and he cares enough to ask after you in that oblique and backhanded way. :)

Attention passengers! Welcome to the fundamentally transformed U.S. of A. As you work your way through the current state of America, for you own safety please make sure that any inconvenient facts and associated criticisms are stored neatly within yourself. Otherwise, Pharaoh Hussein Louie Obamalini , the IRS SS, the BIG STASI NSA, and the dedicated TSA Gropestapo, and if necessary the ever expanding DroneForce, will come to help you reorder your priorities. You are welcome to file a complain via the soon to be Islamic regulated Internet. We apologize if your federal officials cannot respond to every inquiry. They may merely be previously committed to representing other more lucrative interests more relevant to their own pocketbooks and their own secrecy. And as always, have a nice day and think happy thoughts as because of your wonderful and caring government you are safe and protected and all of your thinking is being done for you.

Has anyone read this interview with Scott Walker? He’s sounding pretty good to me. My only problem has been with his sometimes wishy-washy views on immigration, but he gives a pretty good answer, talking about how the government needs to enforce existing laws (which they clearly are not) and streamline the process for those who want to come here legally. Anyway, check out he interview. He says a lot of good stuff.

ama really seems to believe he is an absolute dictator who involves the other branches out of his magnanimity. His incompetence and that of his team is our only salvation. Imagine if these clowns knew what they were doing! Adjoran on January 17, 2014 at 10:28 PM

Which part of Cloward-Piven is failing?
Destruction is easy.

Our salvation? No,, were effed. They aren’t inept. That’s the facade.
You have single payer coming,, and a lot more fascism.

I’m delighted it worked. I first tried it when I had to give a reading and I had a very sore throat.I could barely speak. Thanks to the honey I made it through the evening without rasping and coughing my way through it.

It always makes me laugh whenever someone says congress will provide oversight for the NSA programs. Congress can’t even provide proper oversight over the bills they pass…but somehow these old geezers have clue one what the NSA is doing.

I wish Bmore would come by more often and stick around longer. He’s a lot of fun. I miss him.

thatsafactjack on January 17, 2014 at 11:02 PM

I was hoping he’d be here so I could ask him to photoshop a Boehner peso for me for the upcoming amnesty fight. It gives that already terse and expletive filled fax a little pizzaz. He did a great Rubio peso but the battle is in the House now.

What a great idea. :) He does such a great job with those and they’re so effective.

thatsafactjack on January 17, 2014 at 11:12 PM

Evenin’ jack. I had an old Bush peso and he was able to put Rubio’s head in it instead and lo and behold, Rubio is never mentioned anymore. So it’s time to do the same with Boehner and his ilk. I’m very technologically challenged so I have to rely on the talents of others like Bmore.

Yep. That’s what I call a Web sight. Many hotties created from the imagination.

Axe is trying to build a robo-babe. The first one had vacuum tubrs and looked like Helen Thomas and wouldn’t let him get any rest. I think SWalker had something to do with that to get even with Axe for quiting the band where Axe played the tambourine.

Consider the possibility that the reason Obama, Congress and the Supreme Court won’t do anything to rein in the NSA’s obviously unconstitutional activities is because they’re afraid the NSA will spill the beans on rampant DC corruption. Another likelihood is that DC is using the NSA, and we know the IRS, to monitor and oppress their political opponents who wish to end the DC racket.

Your brain is quite spacious, Spark. It’s the rapid inception and development of ideas shooting by all the time, traveling along the neural pathways, and the large storage areas where all those ideas and memories are filed away that makes it seem crowded. I wouldn’t change a thing. :)